They note:
* We have 44% more Ministers, 282% more portfolios and 156% more departments than countries of similar size
* NZ has 41 departments
* NZ has 27 crown agencies
* NZ has 74 ministerial portfolios and 22 associate portfolios
Click to view
NZ stands out like a sore thumb.
Back in 2011 I blogged a solution to this:
My future state sector would be:
4. Ministry for Economic Development – labour, MAF, MED, Fisheries, MORST, Transport
6. Education – Education, ERO, TEC
7. Ministry of External Relations & Security – GCSB, Defence, MFAT, NZDF
8. Treasury – Treasury
9. Incomes – ird, WINZ
11. Health – Health
12. Social Policy – Pacific Island Affairs, MSD, cyf, Youth Development, Community Sector, Senior
Citizens, Families, Women's Affairs, TPK
13. Parliament – Parl Serv, Min Serv, Office of Clerk, PCO
This means you could have a cabinet of 12. The Speaker looks after Parliament, and one minister per major agency. One could have associate ministers outside cabinet who get delegated some of the specialist areas within an overall portfolio.
To match the Cabinet of 12, I would have 12 sector wide CEOs. They would be responsible for the entire sector and sit over individual agency CEOs. So you have clear accountability in each sector with one Cabinet Minister in charge and one CEO.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
This means you could have a cabinet of 12. The Speaker looks after Parliament, and one minister per major agency. One could have associate ministers outside cabinet who get delegated some of the specialist areas within an overall portfolio.
To match the Cabinet of 12, I would have 12 sector wide CEOs. They would be responsible for the entire sector and sit over individual agency CEOs. So you have clear accountability in each sector with one Cabinet Minister in charge and one CEO.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
1 comment:
This is an excellent piece of research. If David Seymour wants to start somewhere in slashing Red Tape, this is as a good a point as any. I'm sure he reads Breaking Views, but as he's my local MP, I'm going to forward the article to him.
Other changes I'd recommend that would help immensely:
1. Reduce the number of MPs back to Electoral seats only; scrap MMP and make MPs accountable to their electorate, not their Party - but find an alternative to FPP. As Ardern's Government showed in 2020, a single party can't be trusted with majority power.
2. Remove the Māori seats - they served their purpose in the 1800's but offer nothing but division now.
Hopefully this would start New Zealand politicians remembering Lincoln's immortal words "government of the people, by the people, for the people"
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